- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Egyptâ€™s Torturer-in-Chief Headed to WashingtonPosted By Arnold Ahlert On December 11, 2012 @ 12:45 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 1 Comment On Monday, Yasser AliÂ announcedÂ that Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi will visit the United States in 2013, in what would be his first visit to Washington since he was elected last June. Ever since, Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood allies have made numerous moves to reimpose a dictatorship on an Egyptian opposition that grows more impassioned against this power grab with every passing day. Yet like every would-be dictator, Morsi has his methods of dealing...

The posting of tanks outside the presidential palace yesterday morning raises an uncomfortable question for the future of Egypt: is the result of last year's revolution going to be just more military rule, under a light frosting of Islamist politics? The new president, Mohammed Morsi, a senior figure in the Muslim Brotherhood, is the first Egyptian leader in modern times not to have come from the military. At the time of his slim victory in the presidential election - 51.7 per cent against 48.3 per cent for Ahmed Shafiq, a holdover from the Mubarak era - he seemed to...

Cairo (CNN) -- Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy early Sunday canceled most of a controversial decree that gave him sweeping powers, but vowed to press forward with a planned referendum next weekend on a draft constitution, an adviser said. The move is an apparent attempt to end a political crisis that has spilled into the streets, pitting the president's supporters and opponents against one another and raising questions about Morsy's ability to lead the fragile democracy. It was not immediately clear whether the offer, as announced by adviser Mohamed Selim el-Awwa, would be enough to mollify the opposition. The development came...

Remember that distant time so long ago when Obama promised that he would end our old backward policy of supporting tyrants in order to win over the Arab Street. And here we are, four years later, and Obama is supporting a tyrant in Cairo, a problem that has even broken into the normally supportive pages of the Washington Post. How did Washington become the best friend of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, even as President Mohamed Morsi was asserting dictatorial powers and his followers were beating up secular liberals in the streets of Cairo? It’s a question many Arabs ask...

As Egypt under the heel of Mohamed Morsi unravels, here’s the late-breaking news: The Muslim Brotherhood is the enemy of democracy. This has always been obvious to anyone who took the time to look into it. Nevertheless, it has not been an easy point to make lo these many years. Even as the Justice Department proved beyond any doubt in court that the Brotherhood’s major goal in America and Europe — its self-professed “grand jihad” — is “eliminating and destroying Western civilization,” to have the temerity to point this out is to be smeared as an “Islamophobe.” That’s the Islamophilic...

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has annulled a decree he issued last month granting him sweeping emergency powers, in a push to defuse political tensions and deadly violence gripping the country. But a spokesman, speaking late Saturday in Cairo, said a referendum on a controversial draft constitution will still go forward as planned December 15. There has been no formal opposition response to the decree annulment, and it was not immediately clear what impact it will have on opposition protesters who have camped out near the presidential palace since Tuesday. The two issues -- the decree and the referendum -- are...

Egypt’s army deployed tanks outside Cairo’s presidential palace on Thursday following overnight clashes between supporters and opponents of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, which killed at least three people, according to the Interior Ministry. Overnight clashes between supporters and opponents of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi in Cairo killed at least three people and wounded more than 270, the Interior Ministry said Thursday, deepening the political crisis over expanded presidential powers and a controversial draft constitution. Pitched battles erupted Wednesday afternoon outside Cairo’s Heliopolis presidential palace and continued into the early morning Thursday in the first civilian clashes between the rival camps...

gyptian President Mohamed Morsi left the presidential palace in Cairo on Tuesday, two sources reported, after protesters angered by his decree last month to extend his powers clashed with police outside. "The president left the palace," a presidential source, who declined to be named, told Reuters. A security source at the presidency also said the president had left the building. Some protesters broke through lines of police who were protecting the palace and demonstrated at the palace walls.

Mohamed Lotfy@mlotfyamnesty Important question, are the police & army genuinely loyal to president or would they let him down at the first opportunity? #Egypt #Morsi 4 Dec 12 Reply Retweet Favorite Good question. Somebody loyal to President Mohamed Morsi is reportedly shooting tear gas at protesters from the Presidential Palace. On the other hand, according to unconfirmed reports from numerous Twitter users, some Egyptian riot police sympathize with the protesters. This Tweeter says some Egyptian police took off their uniforms, left them in a heap on the ground, and joined forces with the anti-Morsi protesters: Ashour@mhmmdashour Police get rid of...

(Reuters) - Egyptian police battled thousands of protesters outside President Mohamed Mursi's palace in Cairo on Tuesday, prompting the Islamist leader to leave the building, two presidential sources said. Police fired teargas at demonstrators angered by Mursi's drive to hold a referendum on a new constitution on December 15. Some broke through police lines around his palace and protested next to the perimeter wall. Several thousand people had gathered nearby in what they dubbed "last warning" protests against Mursi, who infuriated opponents with a November 22 decree that expanded his powers. "The people want the downfall of the regime," the...

Egypt's Supreme Constitutional Court has said it is halting all work indefinitely in protest at the "psychological pressure" it has faced.Islamist protesters earlier prevented the judges from meeting in Cairo to rule on a draft constitution.The supporters of President Mohammed Morsi wanted to block any ruling that would question the document's legality.The court said that Sunday was "the blackest day in the history of Egyptian judiciary".Sunday's developments are the latest in an unfolding confrontation between President Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood supporters on one side, and his mainly secular political opponents and the judiciary on the other.Mr Morsi adopted...

Phase II of Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi’s declaration of sweeping dictatorial powers was completed on Thursday night. That is when the “constituent assembly” hastily completed a draft constitution that would enshrine sharia principles as fundamental law. Morsi grabbed the reins with a shrewd caveat: His dictatorship would end once the draft constitution was approved by Egyptians in a national referendum — which is to say, once the dictatorship had served its purpose. Nearly three months ago, in my e-book Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy (which is about to be published in paperback), I explained that Morsi’s agglomeration of...

Egyptian "President" Mohammed Morsi "is not backing down in the showdown over decrees granting him near-absolute powers," that "clashes between the two camps (Morsi's Islamist supporters and secular opponents) ... left two dead and hundreds injured," and that the country's Muslim Brotherhood-dominated assembly "pushed through the 234-article draft (constitution) in just 21 hours from Thursday into Friday ... (after) Coptic Christians and liberals earlier had walked out." The draft constitution includes several articles "that rights activists, liberals and Christians fear will lead to restrictions on the rights of women and minorities," and omits "bans on slavery or promises to adhere...

The decree that expanded President Mohamed Morsi’s powers and plunged Egypt into crisis came as a shock to some of his team; a step with huge legal ramifications, it appeared to have caught even his justice minister off guard. The surprise move on Nov. 22 has fueled debate on how far the Muslim Brotherhood is dictating policy and ignoring cabinet members and others in an administration that Morsi presents as being inclusive of Egypt’s political forces and not dominated by the Islamist party whose electoral muscle put him in office. Signs that Morsi failed to consult those formally appointed as...

It is not only the anti-government protesters in Egypt's Tahrir Square who should be concerned about President Mohammed Morsi's audacious power grab. Mr Morsi's claim at the weekend that "God's will and elections made me the captain of this ship" has echoes of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's claim during the 1979 Iranian revolution that his mission to overthrow the Shah enjoyed divine guidance. Since his announcement that he was granting himself sweeping new powers, Mr Morsi has been trying to reassure sceptical Egyptian voters that he has no ambition to become Egypt's new Pharaoh. But you only have to look at...

Egyptian President Muhammed Morsi seems unshaken by the massive protests that shook Cairo on Tuesday night. He has shown no interest in retreating from his recent power grab and the Islamist group Muslim Brotherhood is planning to hold even larger pro-Morsi demonstrations on Friday. … As such, the Muslim Brotherhood seems determined to pursue a course of confrontation. “The opposition thinks that the meaning of Tuesday lies in the number of protesters, 200,000 to 300,000,” one Brotherhood tweet said. “But it should brace itself for the millions who will take to the streets for the new president!” A new date...

Iran will step up its uranium enrichment program by sharply increasing the number of centrifuges used to make nuclear fuel, a senior official said Wednesday, in direct defiance of Western demands. The statement by Iran’s nuclear chief, Fereidoun Abbasi, is likely to escalate tensions. The West suspects Iran’s nuclear program could be headed toward weapons production and has imposed punishing sanctions to try to persuade Tehran to stop enrichment. Iran has denied the charges, saying its program is peaceful and geared toward generating electricity and producing radioisotopes to treat cancer patients. …

As has so often been the case for nearly four years, one needs to go to the editorial pages of the nation's two leading financial publications, the Wall Street Journal and Investor's Business Daily, to get to the truth behind news developments, especially the ones with potential to cast the Obama administration in a bad light. There may not be a better example of the press ignoring the obvious than the circumstances surrounding Mohammed Morsi's dictatorial power grab in Egypt. Morsi gained substantial perceived world standing when the U.S. government praised him lavishly (or is it slavishly?) for his involvement...

As clashes between Egyptian police forces led by Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammed Morsi and Egyptian protesters angry at Morsi’s power grab escalated, the US embassy in Cairo weighed in. You may remember the embassy’s last embarrassing tweeting escapade on 9/11, when embassy staff tweeted apologies for a YouTube video even as the embassy was stormed. Today, as the embassy fell under assault, they tweeted:

Large billboards saying “Thank you Iran” have appeared next to three major road junctions in the Gaza Strip in an unprecedented public acknowledgment of the weapons terrorist groups in the Strip receive from the Islamic Republic. The message was written in Arabic, English, Hebrew and Farsi above a picture of an Iranian manufactured Fajr 5 rocket like the ones fired at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem during the recent round of hostilities. “Iranian rockets struck at Tel Aviv. They reached Jerusalem. Therefore it was our duty to thank those who helped our people,” Islamic Jihad leader Khader Habib told Reuters.